


Whumptober #7 Conflict of Interest

by BlueEyedArcher



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Caretaking, Enemies to Friends, Fluff and Angst, Major Character Injury, Medical Procedures, Near Death Experiences, Paprika Jokes, Rats, Some Humor, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:09:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27056218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueEyedArcher/pseuds/BlueEyedArcher
Summary: He was overwhelmed, there was no other way to say it. Jonathan may have bit off more than he could chew this time.-------When he finds himself on death's doorstep, unlikely allies arrive in time to help.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	Whumptober #7 Conflict of Interest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Svart_Jade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Svart_Jade/gifts).



> This was a Whumptober request from Svart_Jade for the prompt #7 Support/Carrying/Enemies to Friends involving Jonathan and our two Priwen OCs Vincent Bonner and Vukasin Babic.

He was overwhelmed, there was no other way to say it. Jonathan may have bit off more than he could chew this time. While doing his rounds through Whitechapel, he strayed into a quarantine zone. It was partially out of curiosity and partially because he heard a rumor that was cycling through the area about a family that was incredibly sick but refused to leave when asked. It would be negligent of him in his duties to ignore this information and leave dangerously ill people to suffer alone. If they wouldn't leave, then he could at least treat them and tend to their illnesses.

It took him quite a bit to find the location but given the boarded up doors and windows and the white streaks of paint left behind by the Guard of Priwen, he knew he was in the right area. He should have listened to his gut instinct when he heard the scratching sounds. It was sharp little noises, like a hoard of mice piled against a door, digging at the wood. Only it echoed from everywhere inside the apartments.

He stood in the middle of the dilapidated courtyard, searching for any kind of signs of life. A glimmer of heart beat beyond the walls stole his attention and so did the quiet whimpers of a child's frightened voice.

"Is anyone in need of assistance?" He called out, searching for a clean opening that wasn't barricaded with debris from the hurried escapes of previous tenants and looters. "I'm a doctor. I can help." His voice softened when a bit of movement caught his eye on the top floor. He couldn't see well through the balcony railing but it was small, with a fluttering heart beat. A glimpse of pale skin and long hair made him wonder if it was a young woman.

He supposed looking back now, he wasn't entirely wrong in that deduction. It was a woman, though age was indecipherable when she emerged as a mutation and twisted Skal. Jonathan stepped back from the railing but he made a fatal mistake. The scratching got louder before one of the doors burst open with the snarl of a sewer beast at his back. The rotted wood splintered as two of the creatures rushed him from behind at once.

He darted away to avoid their claws and make space but he was sorely mistaken. Another skal joined the fight, face wrapped in bandages as it shadow jumped around him in quick bursts of smoke. Its claws raked at his back, ripping through the fabric of his coat but narrowly avoiding skin. The close call made his undead heartbeat a little faster.

The petite female skal jumped down onto his back, digging her teeth into the junction of his neck and ripping tender flesh away from muscle. A searing pain burned as one of the beasts clawed at him. His hands were too preoccupied trying to pry the woman off to guard against the onslaught of claws that tore into him. He twisted away as they sliced across his ribcage in a bloody smear.

He gritted his teeth and swallowed back the scream as the woman finally released him. Jonathan stumbled away and tried to regain his composure and control on the situation. The second beast didn't seem to enjoy the idea as it lunged after him. He darted in a blink of shadows, racing for the gates of the courtyard. He materialized just short of the doorway when the first beast tackled into him, sending him sprawling across the dirt and smacked right into the rotted half open door of a ground floor apartment.

Jonathan dragged himself to his feet as the creatures converged on him. He had seconds to react. With a split second decision, he managed to dart between the sewer beasts, slipping through the narrow gap of their muscular bodies as the creatures clawed each other on reflex. He ducked and dove past the blind skal, making it through the opening. His hopes were to thin them down, maybe even divide them up on the narrow streets, some vain hope to regain control over the fight in some regard. As he was, he couldn't take them all on at once.

His footsteps sounded incredibly loud on the cobblestones as he raced down the street and tucked himself behind an abandoned truck. The creatures followed behind. At first it only looked like the beasts had chased his scent, nostrils flared for the smell of his blood. He reached into his coat for a weapon when the displacement of air at his back chilled him to his core. The blind Skal had maneuvered behind him. He rolled across the cobblestones to avoid its lunge and came back up on his knees.

He snarled through his fangs and met its pounce with his claws, this time prepared as he ripped through the paper pale flesh and innards. The creature screeched in his ears like white noises blotting out all other sounds. They rang sharply, a painful resonance as the creature died. It slumped to the cobblestones in a bloody rotting heap but Jonathan had no time to celebrate his victory as the beasts approached. He drew his hacksaw to defend himself, raised to parry the claws and avoid the sharp teeth when the beast closest to him disappeared. The second one resumed the first's attack. Jonathan panicked when they cornered him. Teeth seized his bicep, refusing to let him swing the weapon in time to block the oncoming claws. His free arm lifted to take the brunt of the attack as it severed tendons and tore through the meat of his forearm.

The screams that erupted from his chest sang their pain through the deathly quiet back alleys. The beasts ripped through flesh and attempted to crush bone when a shout answered his cries.

"Leech!" A voice blurted into the night, echoed by the snarl of a beast as it released the doctor's shoulder. He caught a glimpse of fire before the beast in front of him yelped as an arrow impacted it's back. It twisted around to greet its assaulter with bared teeth.

Jonathan seized the opportunity to lunge away, using the last of his energy to seek safety away from claws and teeth. There was a blur of movement as armed men cloaked in the shadows of night rushed towards him. With fire and steel, they fought back against the beasts. And Jonathan? He made it down the street, hacksaw barely hanging from his fingertips as blood pooled down his arm and made his grip slick. He found a tiny alcove to collapse into, sheltering his back from anymore sneak attacks.

The shouts of men were a welcome relief as skewed as that was. These were the same men who hunted him every single night. Who swore to end the vampiric scourge that was besieging the city. And yet, they were his saviors in some twisted fashion.

He couldn't focus, his vision blurred as the world slanted around him. He closed his eyes and reached into his pocket with his good hand, searching for his rations of rat blood. He knew the symptoms as they were, he was bleeding out. His wounds were far more severe than he had realized, bleeding sluggishly and refusing to heal. He had one vial to offer, too little to make any difference in his current sad state of affairs but he indulged in some vain hope that it'd take the edge off.

His right arm hung uselessly by his side. The hacksaw was forgotten on the ground, about as useful as a pen at the current moment. The thought of the blood in his pocket was a wonderful one, until the realization that his motor skills were too damaged to make his fingers work struck him like a cruel joke. He could feel the vial beneath his fingers, the smooth pressure rolling against blood slick skin and yet his hand refused to grip it. His "good" arm was only at half movement, as muscles were flayed open along his forearm, his right arm couldn't move an inch where muscle was ripped away from his shoulder. He could get a futile twitch from his fingers but that was the extent of his mobility.

His head hung heavy against his chest with a defeated sigh as he addressed the mass bleeding that coated his chest and side. It was too dark to make out the worst of it. His skin burned where the wounds were raw and exposed to the open air. The cold chill was unwelcome, driving an ache deep into his bones. In his sorry state, he was as good as dead. Were it not for Priwen's intervention, he'd already be dead.

The thought reminded him that a fight still raged down the street. In the distance he could hear the voices of men barking slurs and directions as they danced with the beasts, wrangling them into a vulnerable position before cutting them down. Gunshots echoed, mingled with the screams of the beasts and then the female Skal as they ended their sorry existence.

By time silence came to greet him, Jonathan was hardly conscious in his little alcove. He didn't acknowledge the approaching steps of boots on stone or the quiet conversation that should have signaled alarm bells in the back of his head.

"Where'd he go?"

"I saw him go this vay!"

"There's a lot of blood over here."

"What's that over there?"

"I think that's him."

"Fucking hell." The last words reached his ears with a bitter hiss but Jonathan couldn't even lift his head to see the shadow that loomed over his little huddle. "They really put you through the ringer."

Time slid by slowly as Jonathan closed his eyes. When they opened again it was to the scent of fresh blood flooding his nostrils. "Here." A Serbian voice coaxed at his attention as he examined the dead rat in his grasp. The guard held it up to his mouth. Jonathan's fangs ached as he snarled hungrily, giving in to the urge as he sank them into tender warm flesh.

"Sun's coming up soon. We're going to need to move."

_ Don't leave me please. _

The words never made it to the open air as he drained the rat of every last drop. He licked his lips clean with a lazy motion. His fangs still bared as hunger clawed at his insides.

"Come on Doc. You're coming with us." The guard passed their rifle off to their companion, a smaller slimmer figure that stood a few anxious paces back. Jonathan could smell the unease as tension curled in the air. "This is going to hurt." The guard warned.

He was right. They had to move his arms to use them as leverage and lift him to his feet. The pain was a white out across his vision causing his head to swim. He sagged against the bodies that held him up, drawing a hiss from their lips. "Fuck you're heavy."

"Do not bite or I'll stab you." The other warned. The thought hadn't really crossed his mind and still remained a distant temptation.

The trip to wherever they were headed was a blur. Jonathan remembered only pain and brief glimpses of the filthy street under sickly lamp light. There was a lot of cursing and mumbled words in his ear, a few phrases that slipped his grasp and one mention of McCullum's name. Sometime through all that, he let go of the tiny shreds of consciousness he still clung to and succumbed to the shadowy pulls that curled over his mind.

When later he awoke, it was to the smell of blood that saturated his nostrils with the alluring scent. A dangerous temptation as fingers coaxed his chin up and placed the open wound right at his lips. Jonathan snarled but refrained, drawing on what little restraint he still had despite his dire state.

"Eat." The voice was from earlier, laced with a familiar Serbian accent. Still, wary of the threat that loomed over his head as his vision twisted into hues of crimson and shadowy greys, he shook his head slowly in refusal.

"You need the strength, Doc." The other guard added. "If ya don't, you'll die."

A strange concern from men sworn to kill him. There was another gentle nudge coaxing the bloody wound to his lips where the Serbian man had split the skin open, presumably with a sharp object. It was hard to make sense of the world around him with its warped colors and hazy smokescreen obscuring his vision. The call of fresh human blood was a ritual chant to his thirst, drawing him towards a dark precipice he had promised himself he would never broach again.

His lips parted against his will as instinct took over. His need for self-preservation overwrote all rationality as he dragged his tongue over the stained skin, lapping up the racing droplets that dared evade his searching hunger. The pressure of a hand cradled the back of his head as fingers fumbled through his hair with an uncertain grasp. A warning or a contingency plan, he couldn't tell but the sensation coaxed an inhuman rumble from his chest akin to that of a large feline. 

The guard didn't flinch when fangs broke skin in that desperate hunger that gnawed at the doctor. Forcing his hand as his fingers made a pathetic effort to grip at the arm for better leverage to feed.

"Easy there." The other guard warned, their feet shuffled around him, scuffing what sounded like wood boards. There was a wave of heat that neared as the second body edged closer causing the ekon to growl back in return. His wounds healed quickly with the influx of nutrients introduced into his system, a meal far more satisfying than that of the odd vermin.

"Dr. Reid." The man spoke sternly, jarring the ekon from his racing thoughts as the tantalizing warmth slid over his tongue and pooled down his throat in greedy gasps. The hand at the back of his head tightened, pulling gently at first.

Jonathan whined but grounded himself through the haze enough to recognize the warning for what it was. He retracted his fangs and licked his lips to snatch up every wayward drop. Bright eyed and sated for the moment, his body filled with the warmth of offered blood as his wounds mended themselves with a tingling pain underneath the surface. Flesh knitted together and the unpleasant numbness faded as he regained more mobility in his fingers once more. The hunters stood over him clearly now as that desperate smokescreen faded like wisps of smoke and his vision returned to some semblance of normal. 

It was only then that he recognized the faces attached to their voices. Priwen Guards, Private Vincent Bonner and Corporal Vukasin Babic, war veterans and common loiterers along the path of his daily rounds. In his distress he found it hard to make sense of the information around him, muddled as he was but their cordial treatment now fell more into line with their unorthodox ways. Strange as they were, they often had McCullum's best interest at heart, even if that meant keeping his so called  _ pet leech  _ alive.

"Dr. Reid?" Mr. Bonner spoke carefully, his green eyes searching the ekon's face presumably for any sign of recognition. Jonathan curled his fingers into fists and flexed his shoulders as muscles reconnected and joints fastened together in proper placement. The urge to stretch like a contented cat was mostly from the revival of his broken self, but the filling meal eased him into a relaxed state.

"As much as I appreciate your assistance Mr. Bonner, Mr. Babic, please refrain from feeding me blood of the human variety." Jonathan started, already feeling the inkling of concern weaving through his mind as he fretted over the repercussions of this one slip up. Nobody was seriously hurt this time but that was an event he dearly wished to avoid since the actions that cost him his sweet Mary.

"How bad do you have to taste that a leech doesn't want another bite of you?" Mr. Bonner chuckled, giving Mr. Babic a gentle swat to the shoulder while the Serbian man carefully tended to the wound on his arm, binding it efficiently to stem the blood loss, Jonathan assumed it would be a temporary fix.

"Too much paprika. Must be toxic to ekons. Wonder if we can use that as our secret weapon." Mr. Bonner continued, earning a scowl from his companion who then planted his boot firmly into the sniper's rear end, leaving a dirty print on the seat of his pants. Mr. Bonner smirked as he dusted himself off and folded his arms thoughtfully, appraising the doctor with a look of genuine relief.

"Genuinely glad to see you lucid at least." Mr. Bonner started and offered a hand to Jonathan to pull him to his feet. "Your wounds weren't healing so we thought desperate times and all that."

Jonathan accepted the offer and dusted himself off once he was back up on his feet and sighed. "Very well, but do keep in mind for future encounters, that if given the choice, I would rather face my death than feed on one of you again."

"Ouch." Mr. Bonner grimaced. "But I understand. Tempting the beast isn't smart, I can tell you that by first hand experience."

"Indeed." Jonathan nodded, inspecting the hunters both closely. It was then that he took the opportunity to inspect his surroundings and found the familiar set up of a Priwen safe house. This particular one was occupied and recently lived in. Given the saturated scent and the sleeping bags on the floor, he assumed this was where the two men had holed up for their recent patrols. A third sleeping bag was nearby with a faint scene he recalled from the fight.

"My apologies, but wasn't there more of you present?" Jonathan gestured at the objects in question.

"McKinley reported back to base about the encounter. He's faster on foot than either of us and still harbors a bit of resentment towards leeches. It was better if he went ahead." Mr. Bonner explained as he gestured dismissively, taking a few steps away from the doctor to toss himself into a rickety wooden chair by an older banged up table. It still had cups and bowls littering the table from what appeared to be an interrupted meal. Were they nearby when he had been overwhelmed?

He turned his attention to Mr. Babic who, to Jonathan's horror, appeared to be neglecting his wound aside from the temporary patch job. 

"Mr. Babic, if you wouldn't mind, allow me to treat your injury." He offered, already reaching into the pockets of his coat to search for proper medical supplies. "The risk of infection, particularly for wounds of that size, is a deadly possibility you should not take lightly." He started, falling easily into a lecture with the two men he bumped into almost as often as he did McCullum himself.

Mr. Babic snorted at that. "You sound like medic from var. Alvays fussing." He noted which Jonathan met with his own dry chuckle of amusement.

"You had a very competent medic from the sounds of it." He added as the man offered his arm and allowed him the chance to properly examine the wound once he peeled the bandages away. The cut wasn't as big as he first feared and the two piercing marks from his fangs were close enough to the laceration that it didn't take much to clean it and stem the flow. Luckily no stitches were necessary. It was just enough of a surface wound.

"You should clean this twice a day and keep it dry. Change the bandages frequently and keep an eye on any signs of swelling. Should any appear, seek a proper doctor to take care of it or just come find me at Pembroke. I'd be more than happy to repay the favor." Jonathan explained with ease, relaxing into the familiar motions of routine.

"Hm." Mr. Babic grunted. "I wonder, how did I taste?" The thought was sudden and not what Jonathan had anticipated as a response but by the snickering at his back he assumed Mr. Bonner was making some variety of faces towards them both. Childish as they both were, it was a refreshing encounter to see veterans from the war let their guard down like this, a sign of healthy relationships which many men struggled with upon their return.

"I'm not experienced enough in how  _ humans  _ taste but in comparison to rats, I'd say your blood was probably the more preferable of the two." He cleared his throat and added. "Palate wise. It has a sort of spice to it, if that makes sense?" He felt mildly uncomfortable describing people as if he were deducing the notes and flavor profile of a vintage wine.

Mr. Babic didn't seem bothered by the comparison as he smirked. "Glad to know I rate above rats."

Jonathan finished up his work and started to put his belongings away when Mr. Bonner offered to show the good doctor back to the streets where he could find his way home. He could feel the sun was nearing the horizon, dawn would break soon and he needed to hurdy to get back to Pembroke before then. With a final gesture of appreciation, the ekon vanished into the shadows, leaving his former enemies, now cherished allies in the street to return to their own hunt.


End file.
